


Hard Candy

by omphale23



Category: Hard Core Logo (1996)
Genre: Challenge fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-14
Updated: 2010-03-14
Packaged: 2017-10-08 00:12:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/70709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/omphale23/pseuds/omphale23
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is perilously close to a happy ending. Joe Dick is rolling over in his grave. Or, you know. Rolling over in the back of Billy's closet. Something like that.</p><p><a href="http://eledhwenlin.livejournal.com/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://eledhwenlin.livejournal.com/"><b>eledhwenlin</b></a> did a great beta job for this months and months ago, and it's totally not her fault I'm bad at taking advice.</p><p>This fic was written for the 2008 <a href="http://community.livejournal.com/picfor1000/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://community.livejournal.com/picfor1000/"><b>picfor1000</b></a> challenge, which ended...a long time ago. Better late than never? Maybe?</p>
    </blockquote>





	Hard Candy

**Author's Note:**

> This is perilously close to a happy ending. Joe Dick is rolling over in his grave. Or, you know. Rolling over in the back of Billy's closet. Something like that.
> 
> [](http://eledhwenlin.livejournal.com/profile)[**eledhwenlin**](http://eledhwenlin.livejournal.com/) did a great beta job for this months and months ago, and it's totally not her fault I'm bad at taking advice.
> 
> This fic was written for the 2008 [](http://community.livejournal.com/picfor1000/profile)[**picfor1000**](http://community.livejournal.com/picfor1000/) challenge, which ended...a long time ago. Better late than never? Maybe?

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/omphale23/pic/0002p852/)

He didn't know how to start. They just sat in an overpriced diner and stared at each other, Billie with a strawberry milkshake and Billy with a cup of coffee that tasted as bad as every cup of coffee he'd tried to swallow since Edmonton.

Two hours later, Mary showed up to rescue them. It was six months before Billy got up the nerve to call again.

***

The second time they went to a park. It was too early in the spring, too cold. The leaves on the ground were sludgy and halfway to being dirt.

Billie didn't want to swing, wouldn't ride the merry-go-round, was afraid of the slide. They ended up sitting on a bench watching bits of the ice left on the pond shatter off into the water. Billie kicked her feet against the concrete and asked if it was time to go home.

***

He lost the custody battle before it really started, between the travel and the way that, when the judge asked why he wanted to raise this girl he'd met three times Billy had sort of mumbled and couldn't really give an answer that didn't start with, "this guy I didn't love shot himself."

Whatever he didn't say, Mary heard something that changed her mind. By the time he flew home, they had a schedule, some days that Billy could call and ask, times when Mary would do her best to help.

He maybe could have loved Mary, if it hadn't been for Joe.

***

Four visits, and not one of them had been any more than two people who didn't have anything to say to each other stuck in the same place and waiting for something. Someone.

He finally asked Pipe what to do. They hadn't talked since the night Joe checked out, almost two years, but Pipe didn't say he minded. And who better to explain what kids wanted than a guy who was basically a big kid with an alcohol problem? Pipe gave a whole list of ideas and not one of them had anything to do with strippers or pot.

Well, no. One of them did, but Billy was pretty sure that was a joke.

The next time he called Mary, he asked her to drop Billie off at the mall, some trendy overpriced place with a lot of glass and painfully shiny floors. They spent an hour at the candy store, picking out expensive jellybeans and chocolate covered in chocolate and then dipped in chocolate. Mary showed up when they were still laughing over the cartoons in a gum wrapper. Before she got in the car, Billie turned and gave that grin, the one that he knew was the one thing she had of him.

He waved until they pulled out of the parking lot.

***

Things got easier. They had a system, a pattern, something that was always there as a backup when Billy didn't make it to soccer games or the school play or the father-daughter dance (all of them a relief for everyone, because Billie hadn't wanted him there, she had a father already). Once a month, once every two months, he called and they bought sweets and wandered the mall, eating gummy bears and making up stories about the people walking around them.

Sometimes Billie would ask him to sing, and he'd do it, voice low and always Jennifur's songs, never Billy's, never Joe's.

***

She was thirteen before Billie asked for something different, picked a place where they wouldn't run into her friends by accident. She looked a little guilty, but Billy didn't mind. He could remember the day he looked at his mum and wanted, more than anything, for her to be somewhere else, for him to be somewhere else. He wanted to have no past. Every kid wanted to be cooler than the place they came from, and even having a father who played guitar for a rock band wasn't enough to overcome that.

Maybe if he'd made it big in a punk band that would have been enough.

Even so, when she slid into the diner booth Billy pushed over a paper bag full of lemon drops. They didn't talk about the candy store (they never talked about the things they didn't share) but he brought candy along, and she always quirked a half-smile and shoved the bag into her backpack before she left.

***

He got an invitation in the mail for her high school graduation.

Billy couldn't go, was scheduled to be in Europe for a reunion tour that month. But he made a few calls and had somebody drop off a dozen of those chocolate roses and an expensive mp3 player full of unreleased music he got from the record company.

***

When he made it back to Vancouver a few weeks before she left for college, Billie dropped into her usual seat and started laughing, head rocking against the sticky tabletop and her shoulders shaking. He just waited; it wasn't the first time he didn't get the joke. When she finally leaned back, he saw the headphones wrapped over the back of her neck and at least he'd got that part right. At least he'd done something she'd remember.

She kissed his cheek before she left, dropped a box of Smarties on the table and her new cell phone number. He saw her later that night, dancing in a crowd of girls in the smoky club he'd played too many times, where he knew the owner and could hang out backstage without getting too much crap from the customers. She looked happy.

Billy thought about waving, maybe stopping to talk for a minute, but he'd gotten smarter with age. Instead, he just watched, thought about whether she'd call him in a few months, bring stories of college and her friends to some coffee shop down the street from a club he was playing. He thought she might, thought that would be plenty. Would be enough.


End file.
